NAME
rmdir — remove directories
SYNOPSIS
rmdir
[-f|-i]
[-p]
dir ...
DESCRIPTION
rmdir
removes the directory entry for each
dir
operand that refers to an empty directory.
Directories are removed in the order specified.
Consequently, if a directory and a subdirectory of that directory
are both specified as arguments,
the subdirectory must be specified before the parent directory
so that the parent directory will be empty when
rmdir
tries to remove it.
Removal of a directory requires write and search (execute) permission
in its parent directory, but no permissions on the directory itself;
but if the sticky bit is set on the parent directory,
only the owner of the directory,
the owner of the parent directory,
or a user having appropriate privileges
can remove the directory.
Options
rmdir
recognizes the following options:
- -f
Force each directory to be removed without prompting for
confirmation, regardless of the presence of the
-i
option.
This option also suppresses diagnostic messages
regarding non-existent operands.
This option does not suppress any diagnostic messages other than
those regarding non-existent operands.
To suppress all error message and interactive prompts, the
-f
option should be used while redirecting the standard error output to
/dev/null.
This option ignores any previous occurrence of the
-i
option.
- -i
Write a prompt to the standard error output requesting confirmation
before removing each directory.
This option ignores any previous occurrence of the
-f
option.
- -p
Path removal.
If, after removing a directory with more than one pathname component,
the parent directory of that directory is now empty,
rmdir
removes the empty parent directory.
This continues until
rmdir
encounters a non-empty parent directory,
or until all components of the original pathname have been removed.
When used in conjunction with the
-i
option,
rmdir
asks whether to remove each directory component of a path.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
LANG
provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset
or null. If
LANG
is unset or null, the default value of "C" (see
lang(5))
is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting,
rmdir
will behave as if all internationalization variables are set to "C".
See
environ(5).
LC_ALL
If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other
internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE
determines the interpretation of
dir
names as single and/or
multi-byte characters, the classification of characters as printable,
and the characters matched by character class expressions in regular
expressions.
LC_MESSAGES
determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents
of diagnostic messages written to standard error and informative messages
written to standard output.
NLSPATH
determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
LC_MESSAGES.
International Code Set Support
Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.
DIAGNOSTICS
Generally self-explanatory.
Note that the
-f
option does not suppress all diagnostic messages.
EXAMPLES
To remove directories with a prompt for verification:
To remove as much as possible of a path, type:
rmdir -p component1/component2/dir
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
rmdir: SVID2, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4
